Background

The Blue Course is one of two 18-hole golf courses owned and operated by Penn State University. The two courses are contiguous and cover approximately 190 acres. The operating budget for the 36-hole complex must come from revenues generated from the golf operation. The current operating budget is $690,000; 60 percent of the budget is for salaries and wages, and the remaining funds cover all repair/maintenance and consumptive costs. This high percentage directed toward salaries and wages reflects the requirement that the technical-service (unionized) personnel employed at the golf courses must be compensated at rates consistent with those of state employees in similar jobs. These rates are considerably higher than those paid by other golf courses in the central Pennsylvania region. The maintenance crew is made up of the superintendent (Rick Bupp), assistant superintendent (Scott Rushe), eight full-time technical-service personnel, and a variable number of seasonal and part-time workers that reaches10 full-time equivalents (FTEs) during the peak season. As a consequence, personnel costs are high while the funds available for covering all other operating costs are extremely limited. As there is no established capital budget, expenditures for essential equipment must come from year-end reserves. While these vary widely from year to year, the annual amount expended for equipment has averaged $33,000; however, this has varied from a low of $5,000 to a high of $200,000 in the past nine years. This has resulted in a 10-year equipment replacement schedule, double that considered optimum for contemporary golf course operations. Consequently, equipment repair and maintenance expenditures have constituted a significant percentage of the non-personnel portion of the budget, and the funds available for other (consumptive) costs have been stressed even further.

Cultural operations for the greens include: daily mowing at 1/8th inch, frequent (almost daily) irrigation from local wells, fertilization to supply 3-4 lbs. N per Kft2 annually, core cultivation (with cores reincorporated) and topdressing with a 7:1:2 (sand:soil:peat) mixture each spring and fall, vertical mowing 2-3 times annually, preventive fungicides applied every 2-3 weeks during the growing season, and insecticides applied as needed (principally for cutworm control).